


A Patient Man

by ArcticLucie, MermaidSheenaz



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, First Kiss, Fluff, Gift Fic, M/M, Rickyl, Shy Daryl, cuddling on a horse, prison era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 19:13:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4931911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArcticLucie/pseuds/ArcticLucie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MermaidSheenaz/pseuds/MermaidSheenaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick and Daryl's relationship has slowly been building, but for the hunter, Rick doesn't mind waiting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Patient Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ezabungles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezabungles/gifts).



> A little late birthday present for the amazing [Ezabungles!](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezabungles) We love you girl!

It had been building, maybe for a fuckin’ age, he didn’t know, but it was building, things between him and Daryl. Like mountains swell up over time, how the oceans were filled in by the drop, the dissolution of Pangaea over a few hundred thousand of millennia, that was them. Slow. Deliberate. Methodical.

And he didn’t mind it so much. He wasn’t going anywhere, Daryl wasn’t either, if they had any say. The prison was safe and secure, their family modestly fed, and the Governor’s trail long since run dry. He’d had time to mourn the mother of his children and time to realize his connection to their hunter was more than circumstances born out of the world they now lived in.

Because it was building, in gentle touches that lingered long after the contact was stripped away, yearning, heated gazes locked and primed on each other, and the bumping of shoulders and thighs under tables, around fires, before their bodies settled, the colors of a sunset bleeding together.

There was nothing sudden about it. Their bond growing so slowly that it had no chance to feel like anything other than natural, like truth. Things had always been easy with him. There were no games being played, no wooing to be done. At all times, Rick knew where he stood with the hunter and it was always, _always_ beside him.

Unless…they were on a horse.

“Daryl, I always ride bitch on yer bike. Now it’s yer turn,” Rick said, his hip cocked out, head tilted in challenge, eyes intense like the Georgia sun, but his usual cop vibrato never really worked on Daryl. He’d clam up when he went all Officer Friendly, reverting back to the wild Dixon he met at the beginning.

So he had to resort to tossing a little whine in there. It always worked for Judy, “ ‘M good with horses, please!”

“Last horse ya rode in on got eaten,” Daryl was quick to retort, taking the reigns he’d just attached and leading the emaciated mare out of the pasture they’d corralled her in. And by ‘they,’ it had mostly been Daryl.

“Yeah, well yers tried ta kill ya.”

Daryl scoffed but kept walking.

They’d been out checking snares when they wandered onto a nice sized homestead. It took them awhile to get to the main house, through a few dozen walkers, but Rick trusted Daryl with his life more than anyone else. The plan was to spend the night so they weren’t fumbling around in the dark, but Daryl spotted the horse out the window and they decided to take it back to the prison.

After stashing a few items away until they could return with a vehicle, Daryl wrangled the wary rust colored horse. Rick couldn’t deny it; Daryl had a way with animals, whether it was tracking them for food or transport, so he stood back and watched him work, the movement of muscles, the determination on his face, the way his ass filled out those jeans.

Daryl caught him looking too, smug smirk on his lips before making another pass at the poor girl.

They hadn’t talked about it, about them, but neither were particularly good at that sort of thing. Rick knew they were on the same page though, in sync, because they always were. Reading each other came easy like all things with Daryl, never a misstep between them.

But he was waiting.

Daryl had to be the one to make the first move. Like the skittish horse, Rick had to tread lightly, one step forward when it was called for, two steps back when Daryl needed more space. He’d been in a committed relationship most of his life, he knew intimacy, how to give and receive it, but Daryl was untamed in that regard, had to learn as they went along how to couple, how to accept loving hands on him when he’d only had rough ones leaving scars or bruises from back alley fucks.

Maybe that’s why he let Rick climb on first and take the reigns. Or maybe it was because Daryl always had his back, that fierce instinct to protect. But the reason Rick wanted to ‘steer’ was so Daryl could hold him for a change, and that was also why he took his time going back.

The horse was underweight as well and most likely weak from malnutrition, but his motives were wholly selfish in nature. He had expected Daryl’s hands to stay low on his hips, his body leaning more away than forward, so it was a pleasant surprise when they got situated and Daryl pressed himself against him.

“Go slow, she’s weak,” Daryl said, a soft murmur in his ear. Rick smiled to himself because yeah, they were on the same page alright, same line of it too.

They moseyed on home, a slow gait through the forest, and Daryl’s hands moved further up as they went along, fingers twitching on his ribs like mallets on a xylophone bouncing over bones. Lips twitched against his neck, breath ghosting along bare skin, when an airy “Rick” was rasped out against the shell of his ear.

He turned his head a smidgen, Daryl nosing into his hair. “Daryl?”

The hunter leaned back, Rick’s insides screaming when the furnace that was Daryl left him cold. Daryl’s fingers curled into his shirt and he pressed his forehead into the shallow valley between his shoulder blades. He was building to something of his own, but Rick would wait for it, for him to find the voice for what it was he needed to say.

Daryl’s grip went lax, hands moving around to Rick’s abs before lifting his head, “Ain’t never really been good with this kinda shit.”

“Daryl?” Rick said, cutting him off. He knew where this was going. Daryl was going to offer him an out, a chance to walk away, his self-esteem a flittering thing trapped in the shadows of the decades he spent being redneck trash, but Rick knew that wasn’t him, not anymore.

This was, the man he became after: protector, provider, parent to his children.

Rick released the horn of the saddle and placed his hand over Daryl’s, “We’re fine, okay? Better than fine, and we’re jus’ gonna go as slow as we gotta to keep it that way.”

“Ya don’t want…more?”

“Jus’ want you,” Rick said, squeezing his hand.

Daryl locked their fingers together before he could pull away. Then he was moving back into him, chin resting on his shoulder, the briefest press of lips to his neck that wouldn’t have been considered a kiss by anyone but them. But it was enough, Daryl was enough, and he was so fucking thankful he was a patient man.

The trip home was beautiful, quiet, blue sky morphing into pinks then oranges then reds by the time they reached the main road. Daryl straightened up, hands falling away as they came into view of the watchtower. The outer gate opened and word spread quickly of their return on the new arrival if the crowd that gathered in the inner yard was anything to go by.

Daryl went to jump off, but Glenn came rushing up with his Polaroid camera yelling something about documentation. Rick wasn’t sure why Daryl agreed, but he didn’t move away when Rick leaned back into him as they waited for the flash before they dismounted. 

“Hey, I want that one,” Rick said over his shoulder, walking the horse to the farm area to tie her up until Hershel could give her a clean bill of health. He didn’t want her to get spooked by the crowd.

“Already called it, Grimes,” Daryl said, snatching the picture from Glenn before it had a chance to develop fully.

“How ‘bout we split it. Every other day,” he teased, but Daryl was gone when he turned back around.

He didn’t get a chance to see the picture until the next day when Daryl came to his cell with it after dinner. He hadn’t seen him all day, but that wasn’t too unusual. Rick figured he needed a little time to think after their exchanging of words.

“Hey,” Daryl said, leaning his shoulder against the threshold, arms crossed over his chest, one of his thumbs caught between his teeth.

Rick smiled, “Hey yerself.”

Daryl moved into his cell, holding out the precious Polaroid of the two of them sitting high on their mare the children had named Flame. “Your turn.”

“I was jokin’, but this is a pretty good picture,” Rick said, looking down at the photo and trying to take it all in—the way Daryl’s hair framed his face, the meaty hand on his shoulder, the rare Dixon smile—but when he looked back up, Daryl’s eyes were honed in on his lips.

His mouth went sticky along with his palms because something else was building now. He could feel it, his stomach lurching as Daryl took a calculated step forward, those dark blue eyes traveling up to meet his. Rick balled his fists to keep himself from reaching out and grabbing him. Daryl had to come to him; Daryl was the one leading here.

Leading to lips on his, firm and thin and the right kind of warm, but they were nothing and everything he thought they would be, simplistically sensual and oddly familiar, safe and home, new and old. The heat that he’d expected was muted, not a raging fire but a controlled burn set to strip everything down to the root to make way for renewal.

That made so much more sense in retrospect, when his eyes flew open to see the hunter walking away, because that was how they had always been building, nice and easy like the way they rode home, slow and steady the way their image had appeared out of the hazy white on the instant film. 

Rick was left standing there holding the picture in his hand, mind recovering from the daze to which it had been subjected by their kiss. He moved over to his bed and sat down, turning up the lamp as the sunlight began to wane. 

There was no telling how long he spent studying the photo, committing it to memory. He already had every part of the hunter memorized inside and out, knew him better than he knew himself sometimes, but it led him to wonder if Daryl had done the same the night before. 

He traced the image with his fingers, recalling the feeling of Daryl solid against his back as he leaned into him. It was a small thing, a fleeting moment, but it was monumental for them, a turning point, because even though they were moving at the speed of glaciers, the photo was proof that they were in fact moving, that Daryl had grown comfortable enough in what they were to allow it to happen. 

And to Rick...well, that really was everything.


End file.
